Psytrus
T Shirt Kinda Guy
Independent
Albums sometimes serve as a snapshot, capturing an artiste in a space in time, trials and tribulations lodged firmly in that given duration. And that time frame could be months, or a few years.
But Psytrus has taken the long way home, allowing for this debut 10-song offering to incubate over the course of eight years.
From a commercial standpoint, that might seem like shooting himself in the foot — the iron has to be struck while it’s decidedly hot, after all. But this might also be the charm that separates T Shirt Kinda Guy from the rest of the pack of “urgent” creativity.
Strangely, the album takes off with the somewhat underwhelming Take You Home, before swiftly grabbing the proceedings by the scruff of the neck with the title track ramping up the excitement, echoing the protagonist’s philosophy in life, replete with a Foo Fighters grind and an innate sense of tunesmanship.
Something About That Girl is contemporary in its finest form, a jaunty, observational ditty. With You, is likewise, similar in its currentness, but subdued in its delivery, given the yearning emotions involved.
Last First Kiss, with its intricate chord changes supplemented by breezy electric piano, is just what the doctor ordered for a balmy Sunday morning. Psytrus excels in this kind of vocal delivery.
Happy Break Up To You, the closest things get to roots music, is blues by way of The Beatles. Yer Blues is subtly and tastefully referenced in a tune which details a tumultuous relationship.
Hashtag is easily the best tune on the album, the Jason Mraz/Jack Johnson reggae groove the ace up its sleeve. Caught in the glare of social media and the Internet, it narrates how the world has become homogenous, with individuality almost scoffed at in this day and age.
The disparate times in which the songs were written add to a slight disconnect, but taken as a collection of tuneful tales, it makes for a fabulous listen. With The Beatles as his guiding light, Psytrus was never going to get this very wrong.
